NSW Nordic Ski Club
Orienteering Success
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Owen Holmwood and I were pressed by Andy Cairns, our old skiing mate, to enter the Bushwalkers Wilderness Rescue, NAV 96, orienteering competition held on the weekend of 29-30 June. This was the eighth year of the event, the main prize of which was the Navigation Shield which was held over two days. We entered the one day section under the Nordic Ski Club banner. This section is divided into two classes, the first for clubs affiliated with the Federation and the second for clubs or organisations not affiliated.
There was a special delight in finding ourselves at 0800 hrs on Saturday, 29th June, in a group of some 300 bushwalkers, Army wallahs and members of various fire brigades, rescue services and police services - in all some 112 different parties - in Murphy's Glen listening to the organisers' final briefing. The whereabouts of the competition had been kept a secret to the competitors until the previous Monday. This year it was to be held in the Blue Labyrinth out from Woodford. We had had a bit of luck in the venue as Andy lives only 6 or 7 kms away in Woodford, so he had undertaken the previous night to attend the log-on point in Murphy's Glen to mark our map with the location of the various control points, some 28 in all stretching from Linda Rock in the north to Centre Mount (632 523) in the south; and from point 16 at a creek intersection on Bedford Creek (682 581) in the east to point 6 , a small knob at 592 599, in the west. The total area covered about 100 sq. kms.
There was no starter's pistol. You just ambled off into the scrub! We made a mess of the first control which was within a stone's throw of the start point through not studying the map and noting that it did not quite have the cleared area in the Glen as extensive as it was. Then we came upon it from above and in my enthusiasm to mark our card with the clicker hanging from the marker I gave Andy a shove and he fell over a creek bank some 15 feet into a mass of bracken. After he had picked himself up he said that his thoughts on the way down were - "Hell, I haven't hit the bottom yet!"
We made up time on the next control and picked up a couple of parties on the way, Then it was down to Bedford Creek and up Notts Ridge to Scorpion Hill where we got our next control. Andy and I had been on this ridge before and a bit of local knowledge helped us dropping off the Hill towards the next saddle. We got away from team no. 38 which had pressed us up from Bedford Creek.
Our next control was the most difficult one of the day, no.16, down on Bedford Creek to the east. As we descended what we thought was the correct spur, Owen pointed out that we were one spur too far to the south, so we worked our way over to the correct spur and soon found a 'cattle track' of previous walkers leading down to the control. When we arrived we discovered that the marker was not where it was supposed to be so we conferred with two other parties and exchanged team numbers to confirm that we had indeed been where we were supposed to have been. One of the teams, no. 38, had picked us up and arrived at the control about 10 minutes before us. In fact, the marker had been put in the wrong place about 100 metres away. With water near at hand, we stopped for lunch; a contingent of regular soldiers did the same nearby.
Then it was back up the spur to Notts Ridge and on to a top with a contour marked at 580 metres. We found the control here despite another poor description of its whereabouts. There were a number of parties wandering around like Brown's cows looking for it so Owen took pity on them and whistled them in on it.
We then set off due north to control no.9 in a saddle above Bedford Creek and then on to no.8 on the floor of the Creek a kilometre to the west. During this section we kept time with an all girl party from the Shoalhaven Bushwalkers who proved to be good navigators and hard walkers. The time was getting on and we reckoned we had time to walk the Bedford fire trail to Radio Control no.3, which was a compulsory check-in point, and another control about 1 km beyond it before returning to Murphy's Glen. I was not so sure about the last control as we laboured up the 3 1/2 kms to the Radio Control. I had to lead a walk the following day and had to get to Mass in the meantime. I persuaded the others to forget the last control and we returned the 7 kms to Murphy's Glen which we reached at about 1830. From 8 controls we had scored 270 points if the organisers allowed us the 60 for point 16.
As it turned out. they did and 270 was enough to win Class 2 - to our great surprise! Our closest rivals were Warrimoo Bushfire Brigade with 250 and team no. 38, Japara Activities group, were next with 250 also. There were 13 teams behind us.
Class 1, however, was won by the Blue Mountains N P & W S with 490 points. (They must have had a helicopter!) The place getters behind them scored 400, 320, 300 and 240 points respectively and there were 31 teams behind the winners in Class 1.
These results relate only to the one day event. The results of the two day event had one team scoring 970 points from 21 controls!
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